Irreverent Cuban movie promises a zombie revolution

If you were the protagonist of Juan de los Muertos — “Juan of the Dead” — the first zombie flick ever shot in post-revolutionary Cuba, you'd figure out how to make some cash out of the carnage.

Part horror show, part social satire, the soon-to-be-shot movie has the backing of a Spanish production company, a green light from Cuban authorities and a budget that dwarfs most big-screen offerings from the island.

And its irreverent humor — one blurb for the film proclaims: “Fifty years later, a new Revolution has begun” — could make Juan of the Dead the next big thing in Cuban cinema, and give it a real chance at global success.

It is the second film by 34-year-old writer-director Alejandro Brugues, who says his idea was to tell a story that was authentically Cuban — but within the logic of a camp zombie flick. Closest to his heart, he said, is a quintessential island knack for making ends meet, whether by keeping a rusty '57 Chevy on the road for half a century, or finding a way to feed a family on a salary of US$20 a month.

Locals even have a saying for how they will overcome the constant hurdles that are part of daily life on this cash-strapped, crumbling island: “I'll invent something.”

“We Cubans have had to deal with a whole series of problems in the last 50 years,” Brugues told The Associated Press, an allusion to the decades of economic hardship and isolation that have followed Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“We have become accustomed to resolving problems on our own and finding a way to survive. So I was thinking, 'How would a Cuban survive a zombie epidemic.”

As Brugues spoke, makeup artists in another room were transforming actors into blood-soaked zombies, a process that can take up to five hours. A gruesome zombie head lay on a table alongside multiple cups of coffee and cigarette butts, and a producer was testing out the believability of a detached, latex hand by sneaking up on unsuspecting production assistants and tapping them on the shoulder with it.

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